“Tomorrow will be like today. Life wastes itself whilst we are preparing to live.”
1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Prudence
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Ralph Waldo Emerson 727
American philosopher, essayist, and poet 1803–1882Related quotes
“Preparation for tomorrow is hard work today.”
“The best preparation for tomorrow is doing your best today.”
Source: P.S. I Love You
“You live your life today,
Not tomorrow,
and certainly not yesterday.”
“The best preparation for tomorrow is to do today's work superbly well.”
As quoted in Lifetime Speaker's Encyclopedia (1962) by Jacob Morton Braude, p. 575.
“we have to live today by what truth we can get today and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood”
Speech at Founding Rally of the Organization of Afro-American Unity (28 June 1964), as quoted in By Any Means Necessary (1970)
By any means necessary: speeches, interviews, and a letter (1970)
Variant: The future belongs to those who prepare for it today.
Source: Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers' Power
Context: Education is an important element in the struggle for human rights. It is the means to help our children and our people rediscover their identity and thereby increase their self respect. Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs only to the people who prepare for it today.
Some Versions of Pastoral (London: Chatto & Windus, 1935) p. 5.
Other
Songs of Kabîr (1915)
Context: O friend! hope for Him whilst you live, know whilst you live, understand whilst you live: for in life deliverance abides.
If your bonds be not broken whilst living, what hope of deliverance in death?
It is but an empty dream, that the soul shall have union with Him because it has passed from the body:
If He is found now, He is found then,
If not, we do but go to dwell in the City of Death.
If you have union now, you shall have it hereafter.